Club Kama Sutra held its first $60-per-couple party at Silhouette Showbar, 111 E. Station Ave., last week and had scheduled another, titled "Back to School," for tonight.

The borough said the events violate borough law because the bar was converting itself into a members-only club for the parties, and the district is not zoned for such a use.

"If they open up Saturday night [for a private party] they'll be cited," Borough Manager Dan Stonehouse said Friday. "They can apply for a permit, but it would be denied, because members-only clubs are not allowed in that zoning district."

Club Kama Sutra owner Alan Tizer and Silhouette Showbar manager John Fox could not be reached for comment Friday.

The party last week attracted only a handful of people, plus officers from the state police liquor control enforcement bureau who conducted an inspection after receiving complaints from the community. They ordered Silhouette's to be closed after discovering its health permit was invalid; a health inspection was scheduled for Friday evening, and the facility was expected to be open tonight.

The borough chose a typical road in dealing with the club, said Mary McNeill, a municipal law attorney from New York who compiled a swing club case law study for the advocacy group Morality in Media. Communities that want to shut down such businesses generally resort to old-fashioned regulatory tools, particularly health, nuisance and zoning laws.

"For the most part, the law essentially holds swing clubs can be regulated provided they fall under the category of being a business," she said.

"It's fine if you get together with your friends and do whatever you want -- that's private people doing private things. However, if you open a club essentially to strangers and have a membership and charge people money to enter, that becomes a business. And businesses can be regulated by municipalities in terms of licensing."

She cited Phoenix as the best example of a city crafting a legally watertight law against swing clubs. The law, adopted in 1998 with the aim of preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, says any business falling under the category of a "live sex act business" is automatically considered a nuisance. The city does not have to prove the club is a nuisance; it simply has to prove the activity is taking place.

By defining the activities that would qualify as live sex acts -- and by exempting plays, ballet and other non-obscene performances -- Phoenix created a law that eliminated the clubs from city limits and passed muster in the courts, McNeill said.

Residents of Coopersburg were appalled that the strip club -- itself a bone of contention in the little borough -- had agreed to book sex parties.

Steve DiDonato, the restaurateur who owns the Abruzzi on Main and tipped officials to the swing club plan after representatives of Club Kama Sutra offered to buy his business, said he kept a curious eye on the club during its debut party last week.

"The most cars they had in the parking lot was eight, and that was at 11 o'clock," he said. "It's almost comical, but the thing that gets me is that the place is so skeevy. It really is a disgusting place."